“You look like shit,” Nicholas said.
“You don’t look so great yourself,” Owen said.
Nicholas glared at him. “I’ve got thirty years on you, what have you been doing that you look so bad?”
Before Owen could answer, Nicholas shook his head. “You know what? I don’t fucking care.”
He motioned toward the dining room table, a dozen boxes of files covering it. A dozen boxes of files (containing some twenty thousand documents and emails and correspondence). Two unopened laptop computers. Several legal pads.
“Let’s get to work,” he said.
Someone’s Safe Harbor, Just Not His
They only left their hotel rooms at night.
They’d take a walk on the beach after most of the resort was asleep. Late-night walks, when the resort was quiet, their feet in the cool sand.
The rest of the time, they dug in. They recorded. And they tabulated. And they discussed. They ordered room service and kept theDO NOT DISTURBsign on their doors and declined housekeeping.
They compiled all of it. They organized every written piece of correspondence between Nicholas and the organization. Nicholas started at the beginning and walked Owen through the history in chronological order—what was written down, and the many things that weren’t. He walked him through everything from that very first meeting with Frank on Fisher Island, nearly four decades ago, leading up to the present day.
Every case, every conversation, every piece of testimony.
There was a lot that wasn’t relevant or that they couldn’t use. But going through it led them to what they could.
And Nicholas walked Owen through the rest of it in great detail. He walked him through what Owen most needed to know.
The most important part of all of this: Frank’s children.
There were six of them in total.
Quinn was the oldest, and Frank’s favorite. She was followed by Teddy, Frank’s oldest son and Quinn’s Irish twin, who was not evenfourteen months younger than his sister. And, at least the way Teddy saw it, always trying (and failing) to catch up—especially when it came to their father’s affection.
Frank’s second son, Dominic, was eighteen months sober—the longest that Dominic had ever been sober. He was working in the music industry in Franklin, Tennessee, just outside Nashville. He had three kids—two from his last marriage, a stepson from his current (and fairly new) marriage. He was married to a wonderful woman he met at rehab, even though that is advised against. Each of them doing their best so far to hold the other accountable.
Then came the twins, Sarah and Elena. They lived in Silver Lake, down the street from each other, where they hosted an extremely popular fashion podcast, more than two million Instagram followers between them. Not to mention eight kids between them—who they raised more like siblings than cousins. Sarah and her husband had three boys and a girl, Elena and her partner, Elizabeth, had three girls and a boy.
Lastly, there was the family baby, Bradley, who was freshly out of law school and an assistant district attorney in Miami. He lived five miles from his oldest two siblings but mostly kept his distance from them—tried in the ways that counted to keep his distance from all of them—because, in his mind, he had chosen the opposite life.
He hadn’t yet learned, as Nicholas had, that often opposites were more closely related than anything that worked to meet in the middle.
Nicholas outlined extensive details about all the children—because Owen needed to know all of it. In terms of next steps, all of the children were important.
But for the most part, Owen and Nicholas focused on the oldest two children. Quinn and Teddy—the two that Frank was groomingto take over one day. The day, Owen thought, this would all start to be urgent.
Quinn was the apple of Frank’s eye. In part because she looked exactly like her mother, even if on the inside she was the opposite.
Quinn Jennifer Campano Pointe, who was as brilliant as Teddy, was lacking in that department. She went to Stanford, where she played D1 volleyball and became interested in the law and public health. She had never been interested in the family business—until the day it became all that she was interested in.
This was in part because of what went down with her husband. And, in part, because of what went down with Owen.
Which, unfortunately, were two sides of the same thing.
Quinn’s husband, Wesley, had been a trusted lieutenant in the organization—and the highest-ranking individual whom Owen’s testimony had put away under RICO. At this point, nearly two decades later, Wesley had spent more of his life in jail than he’d spent outside of it.
This was the main reason Owen was so certain that they needed an insurance policy for Bailey. For Bailey and for Hannah.
Quinn was still grieving the absence of her husband. And, as Owen knew too well—Owen and Nicholas, both—grief played out in the organization as vengeance. Vengeance was where Teddy excelled.
